The sexiest man alive is Rudd, Paul Rudd

Actor Paul Rudd, famous for his anti-ageing genes and for winning Phoebe’s heart in Friends. Not too tall at 5’8" and not too young at 52, but always smiling an amiable smile. So sweet he even owns a candy store in New York. Which he took over when the previous owner, his friend, died. Yes, that Paul. Whom you’d ask for a selfie if you saw him across a street because he doesn’t look like he would mind. But whom you perhaps do not picture in the nude in your own bed. Well, all that changes now that People magazine has identified him as the Sexiest Man Alive.

A quick Google search of his images shows up only one bare-chested picture. Of course, sexiness is not always defined by abs or rippling biceps. But this everyday wholesome vibe that Paul somehow manages to convey to convince us of his very ordinary ordinariness must now be subjected to urgent adjustment on our part in accordance with the latest polls on handsomeness and hotness.

It is like we have to look at a sibling with new eyes. Paul himself said in an interview immediately after being conferred the title, ‘I do have an awareness enough to know that when people hear that I'd be picked for this, they would say, What?’ And we said, ‘What?’

According to him, wife Julie Yaeger was stupefied. There was some giggling, he confesses, but also some wifely tact: ‘Oh, they got it right.’ Paul says he is going to be on a lot more yachts from now on. ‘I’ll probably try to get better at brooding in really soft light. I like to ponder. I think this is going to help me become more inward and mysterious.’